The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing information to a communications device. More particularly, the invention relates to providing information to a mobile wireless device where the information is location sensitive.
In today""s environment there are a multitude of communication options for people interested in obtaining and exchanging information. In addition to the standard telephone communication services available, commonly referred to as plain old telephone service (POTS), such services as mobile wireless communications and various computer communication network configurations allow subscribers to either exchange information among themselves or to retrieve information from certain information sources.
In accordance with some modifications to communication systems, there is the ability to provide a user or subscriber with location-dependent information. Dealer locator services provide such information. In a dealer locator service, a telephone subscriber on a wire line network can call a designated telephone number. Using the number dialed as well as the phone number of the calling party, a service provider can send to the caller information about one or more dealers of a product or service, dealer selection being based on a location relationship to the calling party. In fact, in some circumstances the caller can also be routed to the located dealer. Such a service is made possible because the calling party number in the wireline configurations relates to a particular telephone line that typically terminates at a fixed geographic location. Thus, the calling party number is associated with a rather stationary geographic location which makes it easy to associate a caller with a particular location when it is planned to make call processing decisions that are caller location related. One of the primary benefits of a mobile wireless service is the ease with which a subscriber can move through different locations and maintain a communication connection to the network. In this circumstance, the user or wireless device is not associated with a generally fixed geographic location. This lack of certainty makes it difficult to provide locationxe2x80x94dependent services to mobile wireless subscribers.
As mobile wireless technology has evolved, system have been modified so as to provide mobile handsets which can receive text messages in addition to voice communications. This latter service is referred to as the Short Messaging Service (SMS) which is described in the IS-136 protocol for mobile wireless communications. SMS can be utilized with a handset which includes a browser capability so as to allow the user to search for information from a plurality of different databases in much the same way a browser such as Netscape allows a user of a personal computer to search for information, for example on the WorldWide Web.
It would be advantageous if information retrieval using the wireless device could take into account the location of that device. This would assist the subscriber in retrieving germane information in an expeditious manner.
The present invention provides location based information services to a mobile wireless device. In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, when a user of a mobile handset searches for information from an information database, the handset forwards, along with the request, information concerning the location of the handset. The information transmitted by the handset is derived from the wireless network. For instance, the location information could be constituted by a system identifier associated with a mobile switching center with which the mobile is in contact. It could be a cell number associated with the cell with which the mobile handset is in contact or it could be more precise location information derived from signal strength detection based on certain neighbor cell site frequencies determined from, for instance, information provided for mobile assisted-hand-off. Thus, depending on the desired level of granularity, the mobile handset provides a particular level of location information to the information database that the user is interested in searching. The location information constitutes a filter for selecting location appropriate information for transmission to the mobile handset in response to the information request.